A similar buzz is taking place now in East Africa due to a raft of discoveries. In the last three years, discoveries in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique have placed the region in the global oil and gas industry spotlight. More than 50 exploration wells were completed in the region in 2012, delivering nearly half of conventional oil and gas resources found worldwide that year.

So how have West and Central Africa’s newer oil and gas producers fared? And will these experiences inform the path that East Africa’s new producers take?

So how have the countries featured in the 2003 Bottom of the Barrel report fared?

All is not rosy in Ghana though. Debt is soaring with the government using oil as collateral for a $3 billion loan from China. The watchdog committee is starved of resources and the independent regulator for the sector is barely functional. New licenses are negotiated behind closed doors – not through open and competitive bidding. Ministers have significant discretion and implementing regulations for new petroleum laws are not yet in place. Finally, value-for-money research on oil revenues has shown that Ghana has not been receiving good value from some infrastructure projects and little money has gone to investments in agriculture and health.

It is important to emphasize, though, that Ghana’s experience shows that a baseline of publicly available information, a vibrant civil society, and journalists and Members of Parliament playing watchdog roles can lead to healthy democratic debate and reform. The question is: Will countries in East Africa be able to put these ingredients together?

In Uganda, the government has just signed an MoU with its oil company partners Tullow, CNOOC, and Total covering plans for oil field development, an export pipeline through Kenya, and a refinery. Ugandan MPs who were in the US last week studying oil sector management are now set to take up public finance legislation which could be an opportunity to enshrine financial transparency disclosures similar to those in place in Ghana.